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250 MANAGING KNOWLEDGE WORK AND INNOVATION

clinical research organizations who were involved in the trials as they did not provide
their data in a way that was compatible with the system. On completion of the deal all
of the documentation pertaining to 123 held on this system and elsewhere would be
owned and shared by the partner. In addition, as soon as agreement had been reached
BIOTECH people were meeting their equivalents in the partner firm. As far as possible the
business development manager who had led the negotiations was to be present at face-
to-face meetings to ensure consistency in terms of what was said at these meetings.
In terms of project management in September/October 2005 senior manage-
ment had introduced a more co-ordinated project team structure to handle decisions
on all product development. In this, the (satellite) clinical team, for example, report
to a strategy team referred to as the Development Project Team (DPT) – on recom-
mendations for trials, who in turn seek final approval from the Product Steering
Committee (PSC), who oversee all BIOTECH development projects. It was mentioned
that in the past decisions regarding clinical trials had been taken on a rather ad-hoc
basis but with the failure of an earlier project in Phase III trials this more formalized
process was introduced.
An external consultant had been brought in on a part-time basis to manage the
BIOTECH 123 project. October 2007 she introduced a new co-ordinated project
matrix structure. This structure was to replace the large unwieldy weekly meetings
that had been occurring. These previous meetings were characterized by people
attending who did not contribute and many operational matters being discussed
that were not particularly relevant to the project process. In this new structure the
DPT – which she chairs – receives recommendations and issues to be addressed from
operational project sub-teams (called ‘satellite teams’) for clinical, preclinical, manu-
facturing and business development. The DPT comprises representatives from these
satellite teams and the agenda is constructed around reports back and issues raised
in each satellite team area. This way the satellite teams get a better understanding of
the whole BIOTECH product development process and the work can be coordinated.
The DPT reports to the BIOTECH Product Strategy Committee (PSC) who make the
final go/no go decisions.
The project manager also introduced formal project management techniques and
a high level strategy and time line to take the 123 project to a successful partnership.
For example, in the same way that ‘due diligence’ is performed for products, the new
DPT/satellite team structure completed its own ‘due diligence’ on potential partners
(discussed above) from which key decisions were made about the new team process.
These included a process for satellite teams to capture key learnings so that other
teams could benefit from their experience. A decision to produce a template for each
satellite area to complete which would ‘highlight both the positives and issues raised
during the due diligence process, together with recommendations for new projects’
was developed that other subsequent projects could use and a decision to have ‘meet-
ing processes’ (i.e. feedback on how satellite teams were working) as a standard DPT
agenda item was also introduced as good practice. The project and business develop-
ment manager also took all of the lessons learned from the due diligence process on
BIOTECH-123 and prepared a report that was going to be made available to other
projects explaining what had worked well and what had caused problems. This was

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